19 July 2011 early edition/transcript/Epilogue
Epilogue OLBERMANN: A series of hearings that lasted at least two hours longer than even the members of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, Media, and Sport expected from Portcullis House in London, literally across the street from the Houses of Parliament. Keith Olbermann back at Current headquarters in New York. John Dean joins me again from Los Angeles, and the testimony of Rebekah Brooks ends with, I guess, this may be the takeaway from the whole thing, John. Correct me if I'm mistaken about this, but throughout that rather labored testimony about her experience, and when she did this and when she did that, and who worked for her when, and who was responsible for bringing somebody back in their employ, and which person worked for News International and which person worked for NewsCorp – and also with the testimony of the Murdochs – it was very clear that that company, those companies, have very distinct, compartmentalized responsibilities in which certain people are responsible for other things, and only for this one area and then somebody else is responsible for this, and it never gets above that level of management, and on and on and on. A very, very labyrinthine, distinct, clear series of reports – "direct reports" as they call it in business – none of which worked to inform anybody of what was going on Literally nobody above the ranks of whoever jotted down the illegally obtained information knew anything about it. DEAN: I guess, Keith, that's good on a need-to-know basis for the spreading of criminality and misbehavior. It may well be their defense that that's why it didn't spread. It also was, of course, their responsibility to prevent it from spreading. They've all gone at some length about the statements within the corporation of its standard of business practices, which I actually read; it's a fascinating document. It's about five pages in their annual report every year, and it mentions everything from the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to getting clearance with counsel any time you pay any money, which is- I thought that might come up some time today. Anyway, she was very isolated in her testimony. She clearly stayed away from that the police are interested in, and that a lot of the public is now interested in. She was there with counsel; she never once had to refer to counsel who was at the table with her. And she stayed in very broad generalities. We learned virtually nothing that really advances our understanding of what happened from this testimony. OLBERMANN: She did clarify something that a lot had been made of going into this, particularly in the British media, that suggested that when she told the employees of the News of the World when it closed that in a year's time they'd better understand or they would have a better understanding of why the newspaper had to close. This had been interpreted widely as: there'd be further secrets, much more to come, all the rest of that. Did you buy her answer that what she was, in fact, saying was that in a year's time, with a little perspective and the less of the trauma of your losing your newspaper and your job, that you'd be able to understand this? Was it more- is that explanation plausible? DEAN: It was not highly illuminating. It's not highly illuminating at all why all these innocent people are resigning their jobs. It's not totally clear at this point why the News of the World was shuttered. And- rather than revealing, "well, we didn't do anything wrong, except in- here are the few mistakes we made," and lay them out. So it's just gotten a little bit murkier today. Not a lot of revelations. There's nobody in there that's inclined to volunteer information. It's being extracted. I think that where the real investigation is going on is in Scotland Yard, assuming they've been so badly burned by their cozy relationship with the Murdoch empire that they're probably going to do a rather thorough investigation. OLBERMANN: I was- as you talked about all these innocent people who resigned their positions within News International and NewsCorp, I was recalling Robert Klein's joke about the famous speech by President Nixon in which he accepted the resignations of Mister Haldeman and Mister Ehrlichman, and Klein's version of that was: "I regret to announce that I have accepted the resignations of 500 of the best public civil employees known in the history of this country." I mean, it really does underscore one of the points that seems to get lost when you listen to five hours of testimony: if there's nothing wrong here, and there's nothing systemic, and there's nothing that anybody can be blamed for, and, just, "this is the way it happened," and "it's the most humble day of my life," and all the rest of the things we've heard come swirling through this day of testimony: why, indeed, has the place been cleared out, to say nothing of Scotland Yard and the leadership there? DEAN: Same problem, Keith. In other words, these things trickle out slowly, often- you know, in the United States, of course, a lot of this often gets buried in grand jury proceedings where secrecy is the rule. They're very tight-lipped at Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police when they're conducting these investigations. So we'll have to just wait for leaks to trickle out to get more information. We had, you know- we had some slivers of information today, but not any thunderbolts that say, "Aha, now we can understand what happened." We don't. OLBERMANN: Yeah. There's one thing that is particularly pertinent to whatever might happen here, and we know that we've got the prospect of an investigation that pertains to whether or not the News of the World was hacking the phones of the actor Jude Law while he was at JFK Airport, while he was going to a New York hotel. We also know that FBI and DOJ investigations, about the possibility that the phones of the Nine-Eleven victims or their families were hacked by people from the News of the World, has begun with nothing more than a second-hand, one-source story. But it was addressed during the Murdoch testimony, and I know we had isolated that part of the testimony, and if it's still available, I'd like to play that right now and just close on the topic of where we go from here domestically. Is that tape available, gentlemen? Yes? The tape is no longer available. Alright. Well, in essence: twice during the Murdoch testimony, he was asked – both Murdochs were asked this – whether or not they believed there was any possibility that things were being hacked by their people, or attempted to be hacked by their people, and they were absolutely insistent that there was no such possibility. Certainly Rupert Murdoch was. James Murdoch was a little bit more tepid, and they tried to nail him down on that point, and say, "okay, you seem to be a little bit less certain than your father is. Is there any room for concern?" He went, "no, there's no room for concern." Nevertheless, these investigations are underway. Could they really be underway purely on the premise that this one flimsily-sourced story appeared in a rival tabloid? DEAN: Well, given the fact, as we've talked about in the past, that Peter King put the word to the FBI that members of his district were upset about this potential, and the sensitivity of Nine-Eleven families, that's probably a predicate to go in and take a look. There's been enough dust in the air over what's happening in the UK that would justify them at least getting an answer, one way or the other, to put it to rest. As long as- this could indeed be good for NewsCorp to have the FBI say, "we find nothing that is a problem." But the other problem is, of course, there are some conspicuous crimes that occurred in the UK that have implications for jurisdiction within the United States. OLBERMANN: Right. DEAN: The Foreign Corrupt Practice Act being the most likely. There wasn't a lot that illuminated that today in this testimony. But given the fact that we have a number of regulatory bodies, from the SEC, FCC, that deal with NewsCorp. They'll all be sifting through this to take a close look. OLBERMANN: And we could possibly- perhaps Mister Murdoch could be test- could be prosecuted on the accuracy of his statement today that this was the most humble day of his life. DEAN: LAUGHS OLBERMANN: He may have said that, but there didn't seem to be much in the testimony. We're going to wrap up our live coverage now with these two reminders. John Dean will join me again tonight during our regular edition of Countdown at eight o'clock Eastern here on Current, along with Michael Wolff from Adweek Magazine, to analyze the events both here and elsewhere regarding Rupert Murdoch. And then we will be bringing you a much-shorter version of today's testimony, two hours, a special that begins at nine o'clock Eastern tonight on Current, mostly the Murdochs's testimony, and I suspect some of the Rebekah Brooks testimony as well. So if you're just joining us here at the end and you missed all the fun, and all the rest, we'll be bringing it to you again later this evening. Until Countdown at eight o'clock, I'm Keith Olbermann in New York. We'll return now to our regular programming here on Current, the Vanguard special on the Gateway to OxyContin. Thanks for being with us.